The driving force and source of development of the person and his communities
Шрифт:
K. Marx tried to prove that the driving force of social development is the contradiction between needs of people and opportunities of their satisfaction which is being allowed in the struggle of the productive forces of society and the tools of labor, as well as – in the struggle of owners of the manufacture, against a class of employees on this manufacture [5].
Here, too, remains without determining the source of the emergence of the people's growing needs, forcing them not content with the necessary, but to seize for themselves, taking away from others, everything possible, including what they are not able to exhaust or use during life. Therefore, this factor cannot but proceed from some hidden, internal source, i.e. it is the secondary.
The engine of history is the struggle for existence. Such is, in particular, opinion of the representative of school of social Darwinism Ludwig Gumplowicz. He believes that conflicts in society are ineradicable, because people mercilessly are fighting for influence, the survival and dominance. Gumplowicz argues that any society develops in accordance with the law, consisting in "… the desire of each social group to subordinate to itself every other social group encountered in its path, in the aspiration for enslavement, domination" [6, p. 159].
However, similar ruthless struggle for survival and existence is characteristic fullest not for the person, and flora and fauna whereas for the person this struggle coexists, for example, with altruism, mercy, self-respect, and these human features not always suffer defeat in the course of the struggle of the person for existence: the person in the realities of life, unlike animals, knows about own mortality, but in many cases this knowledge ignores, that in many respects influences progress in development of communities, especially in moral aspect. In other words, unlike the rest living beings who fight for survival among themselves the person first of all struggles with himself within himself, and only individuals with overwhelming domination of the lowest consciousness fall practically to an animal state.
Thus, in fact, all the above considerations of various scientists who adhere to the materialistic position, about the driving forces of social development cannot be adequate: they are external factors or conditions that can only accelerate or slow down the process of development of these or those communities of civilization, but it is impossible to name each of them or even all these factors together, as the sources, causes or primary driving forces of the development of society.
Indeed, these phenomena and conditions to a greater or lesser extent have existed under the primitive communal system, when tens of thousands of years there was no visible development. Means, their action depends on certain hidden processes, on accumulation in human communities of some "substance". The main thing from these hidden processes is the functioning of the new – already human consciousness, outside of which the person would have remained as a primate, and this activity begins to become complicated, accelerate and be shown with bigger efficiency with growth of self-consciousness of the person, which is absent about other living beings, and this growth attracts due to the creativity more and more various information streams to the person and his communities.
The idealistic approach to the problem of the development of society as and a materialistic one, exposes a number of different factors, but mostly of an intangible character, which, in opinion of their authors, are the driving forces of social development.
Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis attributes the driving force of social development to the rooting in man of a consciously manifested the thrust towards God: "So this heavenly hail, while he is in earthly wandering, calls on citizens from all nations and recruits a itinerant society in all languages, without regard for the fact that there are various in rights, laws and institutions by which the world of the earth is established or maintained; nothing of the latter. not abolishing or destroying, but, on the contrary, saving everything, that, although is different for other peoples, but is directed to the same goal of the earthly world, unless it hinders the religion that teaches to honoring of one supreme and true God "[7. About a God's hail. XIX, 17].
The thrust to God means first of all the aspiration of the person to get closer to perfection, but, as we know, good intentions can lead away in the opposite direction up to such limit where opportunities for development disappear completely. Almost all religious sects and such large confession as Muslim are an example of it.
Pitirim Sorokin believes the accumulation of base of scientific knowledge is the main source of development, as a result of which the contradictory variety of real-life sociocultural systems will be transformed to a certain integrated sociocultural layer [8].
Scientific knowledge in itself is dead – it is necessary to manage to apply it in a timely manner in time without manifestation of negative results, otherwise – instead of transformation of systems in the progressive direction will happen regress, that was being happened incalculable number of times, and which threatens especially now from "achievements" of genetics.
Gabriel Tarde notes that the driving force behind the development of society is the creative mind in the form of rationalization of tools of work and life, including the inventive. The last Tard considers as an adaptation mechanism, without which it is difficult for a person to apply himself to changing environmental conditions.
The new arises as a result of the activity of a few gifted individuals. Then the process of imitation begins. In particular, according to the Tarde, the assertion of the basic social institutions was due to the inability of ordinary people to invent, and they began to imitate the innovators [9].
The inventive first of all develops technologies, but practically does not touch the sphere of the spirit, the senses, i.e., it mounts kind of the shell, but not the inner – spiritual and cultural – content of the person and his communities. The inventive does not affect national-being features, at this, some of the new technologies can lead society to the collapse weaning the person to work creatively and stupefying him, which, in particular, is happening now in the information sphere, they even are able completely to annihilate mankind by super-powerful weapons, genetic experiments or poisonous substances.
Protestantism regards labor as the source of the development of society, believing that labor is a manifestation in each person of his chosenness by God. In particular, Jean Calvin argued that every Christian must firmly believe in chosenness of a person by God, and throughout his life to tirelessly seek more and more confirmation to this faith, achieving successes in worldly activities, which is the criterion of the chosenness by God [10].
Only one labor is not able to improve as the world of any individual, and to affect significantly the development of communities. Labor can not only do the person more honorable and improve everyday life, but also lead to stultifying, for example, by its monotony and mismatch to the true abilities and interests of the person, and, on the contrary, the time, free from labor, can give the chance to the person to define in itself additional abilities and skills, to develop them, in particular, to improve the process of labor, and an able idler can pity the silly worker and so improve the work process that its productivity will increase many times over, and the work process will become more pleasant and more interesting.
In actuality, conscious labor, unlike the work of bees or termites, is appeared only with the formation of self-consciousness, which has detached the person partly from the animal components of the environment, and allowed him not instinctively as earlier, but with full consciousness of the case to formulate tasks and perform them, consciously changing the environment to achieve the set goals, gaining thereby liberty.
A.J. Toynbee has come to the conclusion that the driving forces of the development of society are the activities of personalities by chosen by God, military aggression, unprofitable resource and geographical position [11].